How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again! (Mark Twain)
The bill is a huge loss of personal freedom. It is a cost sinkhole. It will not improve health care delivery, reduce costs, or improve the quality of care. It will pad the bottom lines of insurance companies, delivering by force 33 million new customers. For those who cannot afford to pay tribute, the government will do so on their behalf. It is a massive subsidy to our least deserving sector.
Continue reading “Sad day indeed”
Oh, I know – we’re in laugh-about-it-shout-about-it election time, and people are going to select from limited pre approved choices. That is the extent of representative rule, but man it does suck up the oxygen! I think that is the only real purpose of national elections – to give us the illusion of self-rule.
Continue reading “Waiting on the mullahs”
Colorado is enduring the worst fires in state history. Colorado Springs proper is threatened, and 32,000 people have been evacuated.
If there were any humor in this situation, and I emphasize that there is not, it is this: A local nickname given Colorado Springs is “Aynrandistan.” More than any other large city in the state, the Springs drank the free market Kool Aid. Even as they depend on government spending more than most communities, they imagine that government is a problem.
They need a few things now – help from their fellow citizens, help from government to house and protect them and put out the fire. There isn’t much help on the way from their vaunted private sector.
What is government? It is us. When is government a problem? When it is captured by concentrated wealth. Indeed, government is often a problem these days in BushObamastan, as the executive branch and regulatory agencies, the Senate and most state governments have been captured by private wealth.
The budget for fighting fires was cut in Colorado last year. Too much government. Colorado Springs is in deep, deep trouble. Maybe they can use Kool Aid to put out the fire.
We’re sitting in a coffee shop in Billings MT, my home town. My only remaining connection here is my mother, 95 and hopelessly memory-deficient. We visit her, and she pretends to know me. She does not, although staff says that in a lucid moment recently she referred to “my boys,” as in “they don’t visit much, do they.”
I have been reading David Crisp’s Outpost as we sit here, a delight. Crisp is a baseball fan, small town variety, or real ball. He covers the local team, the Rookie League Billings Mustangs, a farm team of the Cininnati Reds, which is why I am branded on that team.
Continue reading “Coffee time with David Crisp’s Billings Outpost”
A German court has ruled that religious circumcision is a crime. It’s about time! The practice, irreversible, ought to be delayed until the boy has all the facts and the judgement needed to make his own choice.
I’d go a step further and insist that religious organizations be prohibited from entering a child’s mind until the child is of age to make informed choices. I still haven’t forgiven the Catholics for invading my six year-old head and filling it full of images of demons and burning flesh. This was given to me as the alternative to believing what they told me I must believe.
That is barbaric. But then we all know that if respect for youth was the accepted practice, religion as we know it would disappear, to be replaced by even crazier shit. Like Scientology.
They could have just said that they want their little newspaper to be about food and music.
This post caught my eye as at another place we discussed the meaning of “hubris.” Lynne Foland, publisher of the Missoula Independent, referred to those who read columnist George Ochenski and who are upset at his firing as “disaffected.”
The word means alienated and resentful of authority.
It reminds me of a fellow who used to manage Yellowstone Public Radio in Billings, Montana. He had read a book describing “conspiracy theorists” as mentally unstable, and took great comfort. He too exhibited this arrogance.
In each case here, Our YPR guy and Foland (and Robert Meyerowitz, I take it), they are attempting to cast themselves in a superior light by demeaning those who disagree as being out of the mainstream, as if that in itself is grounds for contempt. They take perverse pleasure in siding with authority.
It does not require chops. There is no attempt to be right and no desire to engage opponents. They take their cues from group consensus and authority figures. Thought is not required, and spirit even less so. They mirror the status quo, an easy thing to do.
But it is no way to go through life. As I view things, they exhibit cowardice.
Julian Assange is a desperate man. He’s fighting extradition to Sweden, which at US behest is attempting to bring him there for the sole purpose of allowing his extradition to the United States. Sweden has not charged him despite his repeated offers to stand for questioning. If they do question him, they must either charge him or let him go. This is an indication of lack of evidence to bring charges.
Once here he’ll most likely be railroaded, imprisoned for life, and/or executed. (There’s a secret grand jury at work in DC as we speak preparing charges.)
His crime: Journalism. Naturally, Americans don’t recognize it.
Continue reading “Uncommon valor”
As I learned here, the mind of the Democrat is malleable and able to absorb any betrayal without loss of loyalty to Democratic office holders. So Obama’s support will not be affected as news spreads that he has violated yet another campaign position.
Trans-Pacific Partenrship (TPP) a trade agreement with countries on the Pacific rim, and one that its negotiators hope will be the last ever. This is because once in place, any other country will be able to join it in the future.
Negotiations have been shrouded in tight secrecy for the last two and one-half years. Even the Senate committee overseeing trade is cut out of the loop. However, 600 US business executives are provided a running text of the documents and allowed input.
Finally someone leaked, and Public Citizen has published the secret document. In it they learn that US negotiators want to give foreign corporations preference over city, county and state governments in dealing on US resources.
If a foreign corporation, say Mitsubishi, were to contract to cut timber in Colorado, and state officials insisted it comply with our federal and state regulations, it could appeal to a triumvirate of non-elected officials given status under the treaty who would make the final disposition, overriding state and federal laws if they so desire.
Now we understand the need for such tight secrecy. Such odious provisions might create a stink. Indeed, it has started.
From Ingamar, or Swede, now “Big Johansson” – a Billings, Montana farmer, posting at 4&20 regarding the news that George Ochenski was hired to write for the Missoulian:
Of course I still remember that Rodger Clauson left the editorial pages of the Billings Gazette to grace Crisp’s liberal beacon.
Where he’s now no body knows or frankly cares.
Mr. Big usually posts non sequiturs. This one was especially offensive. He went out of his way to take a shot at Roger Clawson, a Billings, Montana writer, who died several years ago. Roger was a gem, an independent thinker, a bit of a gadfly (if that causes no offense – none intended). When I think of him, the name Ed Abbey comes to mind. The two had much in common. Their writing was crisp (npi) and witty, full of insight and disrespect for their betters. They knew, after all, that their betters were not better.
Notice the shot here at the Billings Outpost (“Crisp’s beacon”)- it’s “liberal.” There’s more to understand here, but I’m not going to bother. It’s the black/white with-us-or-against-us authoritarian mindset that so many right wingers and Democrats exhibit. Kinda funny.
